Footnote 1 – Jerusalem Under Siege

Curiously, this episode is omitted from the duplicate account in Isaiah 36. Isaiah 36:1 repeats 2 Kings 18:13 verbatim. Then it skips 2 Kings 18:14–16, the entire description of Hezekiah’s suit for peace and his agreement to pay tribute to Sennacherib. The text then continues by quoting 2 Kings 18:17ff. (Isaiah 36:2ff.). Isaiah was apparently interested in emphasizing God’s deliverance, rather than Hezekiah’s submission and tribute. But the historicity of this submission is confirmed in Assyrian annals (James Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East in Texts, 3rd ed. [Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969], pp. 287–288).